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by TheZenPsycho 4350 days ago
"this book is aimed at newcomers to the field of logical reasoning"

What I find in practice with these (quite popular) lists of logical fallacies, is that they are usually written with the assumption that the reader is already familiar with the fundaments of logic and is able to correctly apply them.

This work is no different. While I do enjoy the style of the illustrations, we already have a glut of these things skipping to the juicy parts. What we don't have is approachable, accessible works, free of unexplained jargon, that explain for instance, what exactly a "premise" is. How to decide whether a piece of writing or speech contains an argument. How to correctly identify the conclusion of an argument, and connect it with its premises. And so on, for all the list of things that are usually misunderstood about these lists of "fallacies" by people who are… reallly.. genuinely new to logic.

7 comments

Agreed, this is not a book I would recommend to someone who is guilty of bad arguments, in the hope that they would learn from it. It's dense and requires the reader to fill in a lot of gaps themselves.
"Introducing Logic: A Graphic Guide" isn't bad for a beginner: http://www.amazon.com/Introducing-Logic-Graphic-Guide-ebook/...
This book is good at explaining these language tools: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/947256.A_Short_Course_in...
There is a section "definitions" at the end of the book, which I found helpful. All the words such as "premise" and "sound" are defined there. (Perhaps it would have been better to put it at the beginning of the book.)
Amazing how many people do not understand the definition of "proof". A pithy, concise, and clear definition would be appreciated.
If anyone knows of a book that does that - I want to know about it too. That would be really, really useful
Introduction to Logic by Irving Copi used to be like that (back when I read it many years ago). I taught myself using that book as my main read.